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   Author  Topic: How Persistent can a failed Ideology be?  (Read 1219 times)
Bass
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How Persistent can a failed Ideology be?
« on: 2007-09-03 09:15:41 »
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How Persistent can a failed Ideology be?

I am sure plenty of you have seen all the trendy spoilt little kids running around with their Che Guevara t-shirts spouting out the illusion of moral superiority they assume that communism entails. However I wonder how much people have even heard of the Gulug's prior to now. No doubt you all know about Aushwitz I take it? I didn't know myself until I found them through a Noise project STALAGGH Mentioned the name and where it came from. We are constantly force fed propaganda about the Nazi's and their Holocaust along with their so called "Evil" beliefs, but their is still a constant amount of support for Communism even though it's killed over 10 times as much as the Nazis...

Source: The Local
Published: 27th August 2007 18:01 CET
Author: Not credited.

Ninety percent of Swedish students aged 15-20 do not know what a gulag was, and some still insist that schools should not teach about the crimes of communism. How long will the elites continue defending a failed ideology, asks Nima Sanandaji of think-tank Captus.

A recent study by polling company Demoskop, commissioned by the 'Upplysning om Kommunismen' (Knowledge about Communism) association, showed that Swedish students have a skewed view of the history of communism. Few are aware of the massive loss of life caused by followers of this ideology, and 90 percent of Swedish students aged 15-20 do not even know what a gulag was.

A recent opinion piece in Biblioteksbladet magazine (a periodical for Swedish librarians) denounced the government's plan to spread knowledge to students about the horrors of communism.

In the article, two school librarians write that informing students about the crimes of communism would be wrong as it would risk making the pupils' views more right-wing.

Former foreign correspondent Kjell Albin Abrahamsson, who has spent many years reporting from the former communist countries in Europe, reacted strongly to the piece.

Writing in tabloid Expressen, Abrahamsson points out how strange it is for two librarians to be so keen to preserve students' support for socialism that they are are not willing to acknowledge the crimes of communism. He notes that a Russian government commission has admitted that the country's former communist rulers killed 32 million people.

Support for communism, both hidden and visible, is still quite prevalent among many groups of intellectuals, such as journalists, librarians and those writing in the culture pages of the daily papers. Indeed, outright supporters of communism can be found not only in the Swedish Left Party but also in the Green Party and in the ranks of the influential Social Democrats.

One symptom of this tendency is the widely believed myth among Swedes that Cuba is a relatively prosperous welfare state, offering a decent quality of life and fantastic healthcare to its citizens. Few bother to question the official statistics from a communist country where thousands of citizens have lost their lives whilst attempting to escape on rafts to the United States. Cuba might have gone from being the richest country in Central American to being the second poorest due to Castro's rule – but this has not stopped Swedish intelligentsia from spreading a positive view of his policies.

Similarly, Swedish journalists seem more interested in pointing out that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is a morally superior socialist standing up to the vile Americans, than looking at his dubious moves towards a socialist planned economy and authoritarian rule.

The socialist ideology is not only responsible for the deaths of upwards a 100 million individuals in the former communist countries, the oppression behind the iron curtain and widespread starvation in failed socialist economies. Socialist policies also account for much of the stagnation we see today in Africa, South America and the poorer countries of Asia. Indeed, the countries that today show the greatest rates of development are typically those who quite recently have abandoned socialism in favour of capitalism – India, China, Vietnam and many eastern European countries.

Given communism's historical record, how long will the intellectual elites carry on defending such a failed ideology? How long will they keep giving moral support to radical left leaning youth organizations such as AFA, who are regularly involved in acts of violence? Shouldn’t modern socialism, if such an ideology is indeed needed, focus on welfare policies that can be combined with individual and economic liberty rather than nostalgia for Marxist class struggles?

Nima Sanandaji is the president of the Swedish free market think tank Captus and publisher of the weekly online Swedish magazine Captus Tidning.

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Even after all these killings and the end of the Soviets reign I am still quite disgusted at the fact that so many kids from birth are still so asinine as to support such a horrid doctrine, and it makes me question the real "morality" of society as a whole.

Further Reading.


« Last Edit: 2007-09-03 09:25:37 by Bass » Report to moderator   Logged
Blunderov
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Re:How Persistent can a failed Ideology be?
« Reply #1 on: 2007-09-03 12:06:34 »
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[Blunderov] At the moment I have time only for one quick observation:

"...kids running around with their Che Guevara t-shirts spouting out the illusion of moral superiority they assume that communism entails..."

probably misses the mark. The Che Guevara emblem was adopted in the West in the 70's not as a symbol of socialism (or Communism) but as an anti-war (Vietnam) statement. It seems latterly to have been revived for this purpose in response to the Iraq debacle.

(There is much else to say but it will have to wait for the moment.)


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Re:How Persistent can a failed Ideology be?
« Reply #2 on: 2007-09-03 22:32:35 »
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I'm with Blunderov, but not completely.

Interesting that some Americans (if Bass is a representative) appear still to believe US propaganda emanating from the 1950s when communism was "the enemy." This resulted in massive intervention and the destabilization of little countries around the world, where the less affluent's  hopes for prosperity and a better future were not infrequently destroyed by US activities. These interventions often took the form of assassination, terrorism, and the support of insurrections; and arguably continue to this date. The USA remains the only country to have been found guilty of terrorism against another by the World Court, and has still not paid the reparations awarded. It is only our refusal to submit to its jurisdiction (even though this is also unconstitutional as the US constitution explicitly places International Law before national law) that has prevented us from being found guilty on additional charges. And of course, the roots of Christianity were, as best we can tell, pure communism ("The Community of the Poor"). Now there is a failed ideology that has lasted in its current pernicious form for about 1500 to 1800 years.

Further, communism did not fail. In the hands of not infrequently brutal leaders, communism took Russia from a feudal preindustrial state in 1920 to a nation capable of defeating, although at vast cost, the most competent industrialized state (Germany) of the day in 1942-1945*, to a Nation which experienced annual double digit growth through the 1970s, until its failure due first to US machinations in the financial market which effectively denied it roll over financing, secondly to being trapped in a war of attrition against US trained and supplied terrorists in Afghanistan, along with US inspired and funded destabilization and ultimately revolution in its satellites; while attempting to play catch up with insane American "defense spending" on a mythical Star Wars system, while trying to maintain levels of health care, housing, nutrition, education, social support and pensions which the bulk of Americans alive today will never enjoy.

As for the Gulags, the worst of Stalins madness, was reserved for the White Russians and Europeans that the US, Britain and France agreed would be delivered back into Stalin's care at the end of WW II. This resulted in the Allies loading, at gunpoint, in excess of 20 million refugees, not including the 3 million Germans of the Sudetenland whose elimination was faster, often onto the same trains as had been used by the Third Reich to carry their "undesirables" to their final destinations, to die in Stalins labor camps particularly at the works of the great Caspian and Black Sea canals. We were complicit in this arrangement, so our "shock and horror" should be reserved  for the victims of the prewar purges of the Soviet military, the Ukraine and the Baltics as well as Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili's home country of Georgia and Ossetia.

Again, I recommend you try studying some real history rather than the pale propaganda riddled substitute you learned in school and have so repeatedly regurgitated here, each time to similar effect.

Hermit

* Helped by the British and Americans (who were not at war until long after this breach of International Law (identical to what we are asserting - without evidence and in massive contradiction to Iran's interests - Iran is doing in Iraq), sponsoring and supplying terrorists in an independent and neutral state, Vichy France, which forced the Third Reich to maintain a significant military presence in Western Europe.
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Re:How Persistent can a failed Ideology be?
« Reply #3 on: 2007-11-16 08:28:42 »
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« Last Edit: 2007-11-16 08:35:20 by Mo » Report to moderator   Logged

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